Methods have been developed for producing high density microarrays. These microarrays have wide ranging applications and are of great importance to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical industries.
Arrays of nucleic acid probes can be used to extract sequence information from nucleic acid samples. The samples are exposed to the probes under conditions that allow hybridization. The arrays are then scanned to determine to which probes the sample molecules have hybridized. One can obtain sequence information by selective tiling of the probes with particular sequences on the arrays, and using algorithms to compare patterns of hybridization and non-hybridization. This method is useful for sequencing nucleic acids. It is also useful in diagnostic screening for genetic diseases or for the presence of a particular pathogen or a strain of pathogen.
The field of nucleic acid assays has been transformed by microarrays which allow monitoring of gene expression events, expression profiling, diagnostic and genotyping analyses, among other applications. Substrates bearing arrays of probes (fragments of nucleic acids) need to be produced/manufactured in a manner that allows assays such as expression monitoring, genotyping and other studies to be performed accurately and efficiently. With more sensitive applications being contemplated for microarrays in the fields of pharmacogenomics and diagnostics, for example, there exists a need in the art for additional devices for manufacturing and processing of microarrays.